By Mark Tarre / Special to the BusinessMirror
TO strengthen further the company’s manpower pool here and overseas, Toyota Motor Philippines School of Technology Inc. (TMP Tech) is hiring the 110 graduates of its two-year Toyota General Job Automotive Servicing Course.
“Through TMP Tech, we shall leverage our technical, financial and human resources in order to catalyze national development. This first batch of graduates shall pave the way for future generations of Filipino Toyota professionals who shall complement and support the growing Philippine automotive industry by helping level up the quality of Toyota’s after-sales service,” TMP President Michinobu Sugata said.
As the only automotive training hub in the country that began operations in the Philippines in 2013, TMP Tech develops highly trainable and capable Filipino youth to ensure “a stable pipeline of automotive professionals” to serve the surging demands for after-sales service manpower.
The automotive school has advanced fast-track curriculum, state-of-the-art facilities and strong academe-industry linkage program that will ensure its graduates a 100-percent employment rate.
“We, in Toyota, are going to have a wider dealer network and we really need the help of good technicians. There are no perfect technicians in the world but Filipinos. Our dealerships all over the Philippines are really under pressure to catch up with the demand. We’ll get right away to the job,” TMP Marketing Head Vitaliano Mamawal said.
Following the graduation on Friday of the first batch of TMP Tech graduates, 96 of them will be employed by local TMP and its local dealer network; 11 will proceed to Specialized Toyota Automotive Training Program (STATP) and deployed to Toyota dealerships in Saudi Arabia.
TMP Tech has been in constant partnerships with other countries to provide its students more employment opportunities. Currently they have established partnerships with Middle East countries.
To ensure success for the next batches of TMP graduates, Toyota is planning to pursue multiple partnerships with different countries such as Japan, the US, Canada, the UK, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.
“We also have partners in the Middle East and few other countries and they have been clamoring for more graduates. And we have already an existing contract, we are supplying them about 60. Just recently they asked for more,” Mamawal added.
“TMP Tech tuition rate is around P50,000 per semester. Compared to the low-end tuition of P25,000 per semester in state colleges and universities, it is a bit higher at TMP Tech because students are able to get hands-on training and use expensive automotive equipment in our tech school,” he said. Students get two years of training at TMP Tech.
“If you think of the value for money that the student will get when he or she enrolls here, what they will get from other tech-voc institutes, it’s a little bit more but the global opportunities are assured,” he said.
He added that TMP Tech supports financially challenged students by providing them scholarship grants and adopting the “Study Now, Pay Later” scheme.
“We already have four batches running. In November we will be getting batch five. Our dealers are on the lookout for the best,” Mamawal said.
Currently with a total capacity of 700 students, the TMP Tech campus is planning to expand its one-hectare land area inside the Toyota Special Economic Zone in Santa Rosa City, Laguna. TMP continues to realize robust growth, with sales climbing up to 100,000 units last year.
TMP First Vice President for Government and Industry Affairs Rommel Gutierrez said that they are aiming to double their top-line this year.
The company has a record of 10,600 car sales per month.
“Every month the record is broken by the dealer network. Our dealer network really expands so we can continue to provide them good-quality customer service,” Mamawal said.